Back Issues

October 2009 - Issue 426

September 2009 - Issue 425

Do you know what apples, almonds, broccoli, cashews, garlic, mangoes, peaches, raspberries and tea have in common? Give up? They all depend on bees to help with their sexual reproduction.

In fact, did you know that every third bite of food that you consume depends on our buzzing buddies, the bees? The busy little gals (the workers are unfertilized females) do a lot for us by pollinating plants and flowers worldwide.

Unfortunately, they're dying by the millions and no-one knows why. It’s safe to say our world won’t be the same without them.

‘No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more... people’ is a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he actually said it. Not that it matters. The attribution is less important than the content.

This issue examines the mystery of the disappearing bees.

July/August 2009 - Issue 424

Who owns the Arctic? A few years ago most people, if they thought about this question at all, would probably have answered ‘no-one’, or possibly ‘Santa Claus’, and been content to leave it at that. But the question of who has the power to make decisions about what happens in the Arctic, and who has the right to its land, seas and resources, is increasingly starting to burn - within the Arctic nations, and beyond. Thanks to climate change, the rest of the world has never been so aware of what’s going on in the snowy north. Suddenly, we all have a stake in it. But who gets to determine its destiny? The NI takes a look beyond the images of melting ice-caps and stressed-out polar bears that are sadly becoming commonplace, and focuses on the human consequences of the slow earthquake rocking the top of the world, and the struggles over its future that are currently being played out.

June 2009 - Issue 423

It’s a year of anniversaries in China – 60 years of communist control; 30 years since capitalists joined the party; and 20 years ago next month since tanks rolled over Chinese reform movements in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

As the US falters on the world stage, China is stepping into the spotlight. Yet the lines that it will deliver are still not clear. While some say Chinese communism will save world capitalism, others think the country’s manic economic growth will kill us all. And while some welcome China’s ‘hands-off’ approach to global affairs, others point to Beijing’s economic support of some of the world’s worst regimes. This month we take a critical look at China’s global reach.

May 2009 - Issue 422

It was all about equality and respect – values few would have a problem with. So just when did multiculturalism become a dirty word? Was it about the same time as the ideas of respecting difference and embracing diversity began to be overtaken in the public mind by shrill religious fundamentalism and hectoring traditionalists?

This month’s NI sees a vibrant selection of contributors tackling these questions: British and Canadian cultural commentators Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Haroon Siddiqui; Indian journalist Shoma Chaudhury who has met the country’s leading hate-mongers; and the Mauritian novelist Lindsey Collen, who looks behind her island nation’s image as a multicultural haven.

April 2009 - Issue 421

So, what are banks for, exactly? Not to create global turmoil and drain the public purse, surely! Come to think of it, what’s money for? Or houses? Or credit? Or taxation? Or the economy? Or the environment... or... or anything?

With the global economic system in meltdown, the once booming chorus of ‘Let the Market Decide’ is pretty ragged and unconvincing these days.

And a good job too. Welcome, the Age of Possibility - the main theme of this month’s New Internationalist. In it, we look at how to create the kind of world we want to live in. We envisage a people-centred economics that serves the majority. And we seize the opportunity for some real democracy, for a change.

March 2009 - Issue 420

50-year-old Mabinty Conteh and her 18-month-old granddaughter Isatu are from Sierra Leone. Mabinty is holding up a photo of her daughter, who died giving birth to Isatu at the age of 20. Women in Sierra Leone have a 1 in 8 lifetime chance of dying in childbirth. The risk for women in Ireland, meanwhile, is 1 in 47,600.

The gulf between the Global North and the Global South is greater on this than on any other indicator – and progress towards this Millennium Development Goal is all but non-existent. Yet, as this month’s issue of the NI explains, everybody knows how these women’s lives could be saved. So why the hell is nobody doing anything about it?

Jan/Feb 2009 - Issue 419

The impending climate crisis will make the financial meltdown look like a teddy bear's picnic - and it's the world's poor and marginalized who will suffer the most. We know what's coming, and we have the means to prevent it. And yet we're just staring climate oblivion in the face. As the world continues to belch out greenhouse gases, and governments and corporations champion false solutions, a movement for climate justice is building. Its aim is to tackle perhaps the greatest challenge of our troubled times - how we can dramatically reduce global emissions while at the same time raising the quality of life for the majority of the world's people. This magazine will explore what can be done.

December 2008 - Issue 418

The current meltdown of the global financial system has knocked the crisis caused by runaway food prices out of the news. The fate of investment bankers simply gets more ink than that of those on the edge of starvation. But there is a common thread here – irresponsible profit-seeking with little regard for the future of the vulnerable. This issue dissects the ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that have devastated agriculture in the global south and is undermining the world’s ability to feed itself. The current food price boom is connected to a longer term trend that has created a trap of dependency on an industrial food system based on food imports and agro-chemical inputs. But the NI discovers that it doesn’t take Houdini to find a way out.

November 2008 - Issue 417

As the war in Afghanistan intensifies we ask Afghan writers and journalists how they see events unfolding and what they think their country needs to end decades of violent conflict.

Not surprisingly, what they have to say is rather different from the statements emanating from Western politicians and mainstream media pundits.

This month’s issue of the New Internationalist gives you a different - and more authentic - perspective on one of the world’s key issues. Not only are the articles written by Afghans, but the images too are the work of first-rate photographers and cartoonists from the country.

October 2008 - Issue 416

Cut, cut, cut! ‘Read my lips – no more taxes!’ For the better part of a generation, political mantras about tax have been deliberately misleading. ‘Small’ government and ‘lower’ taxes have not cut the tax bill or government budgets. They have camouflaged a switch from taxes on personal and corporate wealth to taxes on anyone and anything else. Today, the more political power you have, the less tax you are likely to pay. A tax ‘consensus’ has been quietly engineered by the IMF and imposed worldwide, regardless of democratic preference or absolute human needs. As globalization goes mental and public funds prop up the world’s banks, this month the NI uncovers the global tax scandal - and suggests where justice might lie.

September 2008 - Issue 415

Sixty years ago plastic was an exotic development of modern chemistry. Today it is the most widespread human-made substance in the world. More than 250 billion pounds of raw plastic pellets are produced from petroleum feedstock every year. It is everywhere, in places you never imagined: computers and cell phones; packaging; food and drink containers; home furnishings and building materials; cars, trucks, airplanes and boats; children’s toys and beauty products.

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